Subject: Re: Off Topic: was X forwarding
To: Paul Goyette <paul@whooppee.com>
From: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@loki.stanford.edu>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 01/13/1998 20:16:56
> Well, we got this way because back in the old days (yes, when dinosaurs
> roamed the earth, and the mountains were mere hills) an X server was
> called a server because it provided services, namely the ability for an
> application to present its output to the user.  Somewhere along the way
> we all decided that, just because there were more cases of machines
> providing application/compute or database services, that the user was
> therefore always a client.
> 
> X didn't really get anything wrong - an X server provides display
> services.  The rest of the world got things wrong when it decided that
> the human being (and his/her local machine) was always a client.

They also forgot that the human in her/his chair connecting to these
db/computation services in turn provided the service of validating
(possably financially) their very existance. All the xterms on all the
machines I log into would be worthless w/o X servers running around
giving them screens to connect to.

Take care,

Bill